News

Actions

When night fell, the chickens killed the fox

Posted at 4:33 PM, Mar 14, 2019
and last updated 2019-03-14 16:33:24-04

It was not quite the easy meal the fox may have expected when it entered a bustling chicken coop at an agricultural school in northwest France.

The automatic hatch door closed behind the juvenile fox, trapping him in a coop holding 3,000 hens, reports the BBC. The birds confronted the intruder, thought to be five or six months old, and pecked it to death.

“There was a herd instinct,” says the school’s farming director. “It had blows to its neck, blows from beaks.”

The young fox’s body was found in the corner of the coop the next day, its stomach having repeatedly been pecked, reports CNN.

Just 18 months ago a fox made its way in and did away with some of the chickens, but students of the school do regularly find “devoured” pigeons in the coop.

LiveScience notes that chickens did indeed descend from dinosaurs and quips that these birds “channeled their inner Tyrannosaurus rex” in going after the fox. It also suggests a genetic component: In 2016 Chinese scientists identified parts of the chicken genome that were linked with aggressive behaviors. (Read more chicken stories.)

More From Newser:
Cops Thought He Killed His Parents. He Was Dead All AlongHere’s What Scott Peterson Looks Like NowYou’re All Going to Die,’ Cruz Laughs in Chilling Video